Companies face a new reality of Trump tariff chaos

global trade it pioneered and furthered over several decades. Trump says the levies will bring jobs back to the United States — but executives in the immediate aftermath were focused on possibly raising prices, reducing shipments to the world's largest economy, or just cutting back investment activity outright.

«This is how you sabotage the world's economic engine while claiming to supercharge it,» said Nigel Green, CEO of global financial advisory deVere Group. «The reality is stark: these tariffs will push prices higher on thousands of everyday goods — from phones to food — and that will fuel inflation at a time when it is already uncomfortably persistent.» Trump sees tariffs as a way of protecting the domestic economy from unfair global competition and a bargaining chip for better terms for the U.S.

The most common method of dealing with tariffs is to raise prices, passing along the cost to customers for as long as they can stand it. Other companies may try to diversify supply chains, but Trump's reciprocal 34% tariff on China was accompanied by 46% and 49% tariffs on Vietnam and Cambodia, respectively — all Asian countries where companies had been shifting output. The effect could be to boost the price of retail goods, evident in the aftermath of the announcement, when retailing giants like Walmart and Target both lost more than 6% in post-market trading, while specialty names like Lululemon dropped more than 10%. Target and Best Buy have warned they will have to raise prices, but their margins are more likely